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Bulletin Spring 2018

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THE ARTIST WITHIN ROS

THE ARTIST WITHIN ROS HARMAN, MSWA MEMBER “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” Salvador Dali. I visited the annual Year 12 art students’ exhibition at the Perth Art Gallery recently. The displayed works were amazing. They were meaningful, beautiful and so, so skilful. I was very impressed. I’d like to be an artist. Goodness knows I’ve tried over the years but there comes a point in your life where you have to face the truth: Monet I am not. When I was a child I would sit at the kitchen table with water paints and butcher’s paper painting boxy figures with stick legs and large eyes. During my teens in the seventies, I turned to macramé and crochet, starting ambitious pot plant hangers and crocheted bikinis. One year I convinced my mother to buy me a large quantity of purple raffia for what was supposed to be an incredibly beautiful wall hanging. That never-finished purple tangle ended up buried in the depths of a hall cupboard until it was finally thrown out when my mother moved house. University, marriage, multiple sclerosis (MS) and motherhood got in the way of my artistic career for a couple of decades, but I did attend a mosaic tiling course with a friend at some point during that period. I decorated a plant pot with multicoloured tiles, and gave it to my mother for her birthday. I know her well enough to know that the enthusiasm and thanks she expressed were not genuine. Next time I visited her I searched around for ages until I finally found it at the bottom of her beautifully manicured garden behind some shrubs. Neither of us ever mentioned it again. I picked up a paintbrush again in my 40’s when I attended a social painting group. I daubed acrylic paints on canvas in an attempt to recreate scenery from photos, but the results were not inspiring. I have not hung these pictures on my wall, but have them hidden behind some boxes in the spare room. I enjoyed the conversation and morning tea, though. When I was invited to join an art/craft group at MSWA I wondered if my time in the spotlight as an artist was finally coming. The group is called ‘Embrace the Shake’ and is intended to encourage creative expression in a supported environment among people with MS who have a tremor, or other difficulties with their hands. Actually, my hands are fine but they didn’t seem to mind me joining in anyway. I have discovered that it takes more than good hands to make a masterpiece but we have fun and we have cake for morning tea. I have a few excellent artists in my extended family. My elderly mother painted some very pretty watercolour flowers when she was younger. My brother-in-law, as well as being an excellent photographer and cameraman, paints lovely landscapes. A niece and a couple of nephews are skilled at drawing and are creative visual artists. Obviously the artistic DNA avoided me when I was born. I have had one moment of artistic success. Our group had an outing one day into the bush where we discovered some paperbark trees. We cautiously stripped a bit of bark off one that had fallen over. Back at the art room I selected a piece, added a couple of squiggles with black pen and put it inside a frame I found, and lo and behold – a landscape! I have my bark painting on my sideboard in my living room, and just nod modestly when guests and visitors compliment me. Art is good for you, apparently. “Art develops the whole brain. It is proven that art increases attention, strengthens focus, requires practice, develops hand-eye coordination and interacting with the world using mediums and tools.” (Obxartstudio.com) I did some research and there are lots of quotes by famous artists. Jackson Pollock of Blue Poles fame stated that “Painting is self-discovery.” Don Miguel Ruez said “Every human is an artist.” That may be true, but I note that famous Impressionist Henri Matisse once said “Creativity takes courage.” I know that is true. I don’t think I am going to make my mark on the world through painting. I think I’ll stick to writing. But I will keep going to our art group. I enjoy the morning tea. 26 | MSWA BULLETIN SPRING 2018

THAT’S LIFE WITH NARELLE NARELLE TAYLOR, MSWA MEMBER MSWA has arranged and provided me with so much assistance, in so many forms, since I joined 22 years ago. I’ve had lots of support workers who have helped me be good at whatever role I was enacting at the time. I’ve grown fond of, become grateful to, and been respectful of them, as I’m sure they must have come to be of me, and now some of them hold places in my memory like friends, or family members. When I was alone at home, my children had married and moved out, my husband had died, I was swanning about in a place that was far too big for just one person. The support workers would come more frequently because I needed their help more frequently. It dawned on me that a ‘care facility’ would do everything the carers were doing, and I’d be able to go out and come back, the bed would be made, the washing would be done, the food would be cooked, and I would not have had to supervise any of it. My support worker comes here now as ‘social support,’ and the staff here do all the other stuff. It suits me very well. Some support workers at home had been coming for years. One even came to be ‘social support’ at this facility when I had moved here. My transition away from home, because I’d chosen to do it, was not as confounding and worrisome for me, as it seems to be for so many of the other residents here. Ageing alone separates the individual a little bit from the mainstream of society and then, for them to be locked into a place like this, for their own safety of course, is so far from their understanding. It’s so often a topic of conversation with them. Even those residents that are now spoon-fed and in a ‘transporter chair’ will sometimes grizzle that they could manage at home alone and will talk of their inability to fathom why they’ve been incarcerated. I speak with them about it as if I am dealing with a child. Because of their attitude, I then file them in the category of those residents whom I’m not going to include as a close friend. I still like them, but it’s one-way traffic. They’re out of time with life’s background music. One resident who has Parkinson’s, but is walking, came with me to a nearby coffee shop. We made our way there, me in my power-chair, and her holding on to the back of it. We crossed two roads then arrived and enjoyed our cake and cuppa. The young table attendant then helped us negotiate safely past other tables and chairs, back out onto the footpath. Doris resumed her position behind my chair and the waiter said, “well, there you are ladies, all set to go. What are you going to do today?” I thought, “we’ve just done it!” I said, “well, Doris and I spend a lot of time in the laboratory,” he just nodded his head. He knew it wasn’t true and I hope he realised that his question was not suitable for Doris and I. He’s always very nice to me now and I usually go there for morning tea with my support worker and he always serves us with a pleasant alacrity. I am proud of the way my support worker and I can get around. We can go almost anywhere. The world is becoming more wheelchair-friendly. It’s my oyster! Comparatively speaking, we are so good. I heard recently of young sportsmen, soccer players actually, who each needed to be sedated and wrapped up like parcels in order to get back on track and go home. I’m sure they’d be impressed with our form. MSWA BULLETIN SPRING 2018 | 27

Bulletin